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The Listings: Dec. 16 -- Dec. 22; TIM BERNE'S PARAPHRASE

There may not be a jazz musician more in tune with the notion of rugged individualism than the alto saxophonist and composer Tim Berne. More than 25 years ago, Mr. Berne released the first album on Empire, his own label. He has trafficked in the above-ground music industry since then -- recording for the Polygram imprint JMT, and, more fleetingly, Columbia Records -- but nothing seems to satisfy him more than self-reliance. Since 1996, Mr. Berne has channeled his autonomy through Screwgun Records, which he runs out of a brownstone in Brooklyn. The label faithfully mirrors its founder's ethos of hardscrabble abstraction: until recently, Screwgun CD's came in industrial brown cardboard, with graffiti-like scribbles by the graphic artist Steve Byram. "Pre-emptive Denial," the label's 16th release, bears more colorful packaging but leaves the music raw; its source material was a bootleg of Mr. Berne's band Paraphrase, performing in the East Village just seven months ago. Dividing evenly into two 25-minute tracks, the album follows the sort of wide exploratory arc that has long typified Mr. Berne's compositional voice. The catch is that Paraphrase is a free-improvising trio, shaped as much by the sensibilities of Drew Gress, the bassist, and Tom Rainey, the drummer, (above left, with Mr. Berne, center, and Mr. Gress). Appearing in Mr. Berne's native Park Slope next week, the musicians will see their work supplemented with spontaneously arranged projections by Mr. Byram and another artist, Jonathon Rosen. This cross-disciplinary experiment could succeed or fail; either way, it should jibe with Mr. Berne's intrepid ideals. (Wednesday at 8 and 10 p.m., Barbes, 376 Ninth Street, at Sixth Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn, (718) 965-9177; cover, $8. www.screwgunrecords.com)